


when I was drowning, that's when I could finally breathe

by merthurxmalec



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, M/M, No Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), god knows we need that right now, well not a happy ending but a hopeful one?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 06:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18585874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merthurxmalec/pseuds/merthurxmalec
Summary: NO AVENGERS: ENDGAME SPOILERS~It has been 567 days.Well, that is not entirely accurate – it has been 566 days and 17 hours. He had been counting the seconds too, but he lost his place sometime after he got to 49 seconds for the 38th time.But yes, 566 days and 17 hours was practically 567 days (No, it’s not, he could hear Tony’s voice say in his head, but Tony wasn’t here, was he?). 567 days, and every moment of it had been pure agony.





	when I was drowning, that's when I could finally breathe

**Author's Note:**

> so I'm watching Endgame tonight and I wanted to write one more fic about it before we find out what ACTUALLY happens (and who actually dies). 
> 
> Not beta'd or proof-read, as usual because I'm lazy :( 
> 
> title is from Taylor Swift's 'Clean'

It has been 567 days.

 

Well, that is not entirely accurate – it has been 566 days and 17 hours. He had been counting the seconds too, but he lost his place sometime after he got to 49 seconds for the 38thtime.

 

But yes, 566 days and 17 hours was practically 567 days ( _No, it’s not_ , he could hear Tony’s voice say in his head, but Tony wasn’t here, was he?). 567 days, and every moment of it had been pure agony.

 

**_Day 1_ **

 

Day 1 was okay, perhaps because Steve didn’t actually think they lost.

 

They’re the Avengers, and the Avengers didn’t lose. The Avengers always beat whatever evil they were facing, they came out weighed down with grief, they came out burdened by the responsibility of the world on their shoulders, they came out with a piece of their soul chipped with the guilt of not being enough – but they came out. They always, always came out victorious, together.

 

_But we weren’t together_ , a voice supplied in his head, and it sounded so much like _him. We weren’t together, because you took them all and left me alone, and now I’m not there either. I’m dead, Steve._

 

No.

 

No, no, no, no, no.

 

He is not dead. He can’t be dead.

 

Steve ended day one crashed down on the bathroom floor in Wakanda, his head between his bunched up knees and his hands pressed firmly over his ears.

 

That’s how Natasha found him, his sobs loudly and uncontrollable. Natasha pulled him into her lap, her hands carding through his long hair, greasy and covered with dirt and ash.

 

(Bucky’s ash, and that realisation made his sobs even louder.)

 

Still, Steve had his hands pressed over his ears.

 

“You’re not dead, you’re not dead, you’re not dead,” he kept repeating, shouting at the voice in his head to _just stop talking._

 

Natasha didn’t ask him who he was talking about.

 

 

 

**Day 2**

 

Day 2 is a more sombre affair.

 

If Steve spent the first day of Hell in a state of denial, then day 2 was when he got angrily thrust back to reality. He woke up from a fitful sleep he doesn’t remember falling into, and for about two seconds he was blissfully unaware of the horrors he had faced in the last couple of days.

 

He had woken up with one thought in his head, one feeling embedded in his chest, just like how he has been waking up for the last ten years.

 

_Tony._

For a glorious second, Steve felt a smile etch across his face as he tried to conjure up the image of a sleep Tony, always grumpy in the mornings, stumbling into the kitchen in a sleep-induced daze. He would always make a bee-line for his first cup of morning coffee – first of many, although Steve would try his best to ensure that is not the case and fail miserably – and Steve would feel his heart glow.

 

The next second, he would be hit with the second thought – _you lost him, you left him, and you lost him._ That thought was not anything out of the ordinary either. In fact, he had become rather accustomed to it in the last two years. He lost Tony, lost the love of his life, and he knew he would spend every day of his miserable existence trying to live with it.

 

It was the thought that infiltrated his brain in the third second that left him in a stone cold stupor, as cold as the ice they had found him in (and he desperately hoped they had left him in).

 

_You will never see him again,_ his brain said, and that was the moment all the memories came flooding back.

 

Bucky, Bucky’s quiet cry for help as he slipped away again, after Steve lost him again.

 

Sam, who had to probably die alone because Steve wasn’t there – wasn’t there for the man who was always there for him. Sam, whose ashes Steve can’t even locate anymore because they’re gone, they got blown away by the wind that took with it every purpose Steve had for surviving.

 

Wanda, just a kid who deserved so much more.

 

Vision, whose life he promised to save.

 

_It should have been me,_ he thought. _It should always be me._

Tony, Tony who shone like the brightest star in the galaxy, who illuminated his dark life with hope and with love and with purpose. Steve Rogers was a man out of time, a man who had left himself in the cold, icy waters of the Atlantic over seventy years ago. He might have been taken out of the ice, might have been warmed up and told to live, but his heart had still been enclosed in an icy cage, its sharp edges embedding deeper and deeper into his heart. But then Tony Stark had looked up at him and smiled, and the ice had begun to thaw.

 

Tony, who had been beamed up to the stars, and never came back.

 

It made sense, to be honest. After all, Steve Rogers belonged to the ocean, and Tony Stark belonged to the stars.

 

Day 2, he walked out of his small suite in the Wakandan palace to find Natasha in the battlefield, sitting next to the remnants of ashes which were scattered over a rock. Natasha looked up at him, her mouth set in a grim line.

 

“I want to go home,” he said.

 

“Then let’s go home.”

 

**_Day 4_ **

 

Steve didn’t know what he was expecting, to be honest.

 

Somehow, in his head he had convinced himself that the solution to all their problems lay at home. He had walked into the Compound, and did not stop to put his bags down or greet a mourning Happy who had been waiting for them by the entrance.

 

_Happy is still here,_ he remembers thinking as he speeds past him, _Tony would be happy to know._

He doesn’t stop, doesn’t even wait for the lift but rather speeds down the stairs, two steps at a time. He gets to Tony’s lab in record time, stabbing his code (his mother’s name) into the scanner. It opens.

 

Steve barely gives himself time to marvel at the fact, that Tony didn’t erase Steve’s access to the part of the house that is truly Tony’s home, before he runs in. Somehow, in the eighteen hours it took them to get back from Wakanda, Steve had convinced himself that everything is okay. He would walk into the lab, and he would find Tony bent over his workshop table, multiple empty cups of coffee skewered across the table that would be a true indication of how long Tony has been up. He would walk in, and Tony would look up and smile, and everything would be okay.

 

The lab was empty.

 

The lab was empty, save for DUM-E who had positioned herself in front of Steve, staring forlornly. Tony wasn’t here, because Tony was gone.

 

He bent down in front of DUM-E, stroking her metallic arm, and let his tears fall on the cold lab floor.

 

That is how Pepper had found him, maybe hours later, or maybe minutes and seconds. She didn’t say anything, just walked over to the corner of in which Steve had positioned himself with DUM-E. She sat down, resting her head softly on DUM-E, quietly taking Steve’s hands in her own. They sat there for what felt like hours, in complete silence, all mourning the man they loved.

 

**_Day 6_ **

 

There was a picture on top of Tony’s table.

 

Tony was ( _is,_ Steve’s brain insisted, _he is_ ) a sentimental man, no matter how much he tries to deny the fact. Not long after the Avengers became a team, became a family, Tony added a picture of the one he had kept on desk of his mother and father (to remind myself to not be like him, Tony had replied bitterly, one dark night when Steve had asked him why), a colourful frame of the Avengers one movie night. Steve still remembers the day; they had just started a marathon of Star Wars, which Tony and Clint had declared to be a very necessary and integral part of Mission Assimilate Captain America into The Modern World. Tony and Steve were at the centre of the picture, Tony’s head resting on Steve’s shoulders and his legs thrown over Rhodey. Clint and Natasha had positioned themselves on the floor in front of the couch, with Thor was sprawled on the arm chair in the corner, his head thrown back with a roaring laugh at something Bruce has said standing behind him, balancing three bowls of popcorn in his arms. The image was domestic and happy, and the twinge in Steve’s chest intensified every time he looked at it.

 

This was it. This was his family.

 

That picture isn’t there anymore, nor is the one of Howard and Maria. Instead, there is just one single frame, of Tony and a kid. They’re holding a certificate, albeit upside down, both holding bunny ears over the other’s head. The kid is laughing freely, the grin covering his entire face, his posture screaming excitement. And Tony? Tony looked happier than Steve had ever seen him.

 

The smile on his face was bright and giddy, his eyes shining with mischief and love and _pride._ It was a look Steve had never seen on Tony, not once in the six years they had known each other, and yet Steve knew that he would wield every ounce of power in the world to see that look on Tony’s face, because he looked _happy._

“That is Peter,” Rhodey’s voice came behind him, and Steve hastily put the frame back on the table. He felt as if he had been caught intruding on a private moment. Whoever this kid – Peter – was, he was someone important to Tony, and someone from the life Tony had after Steve. Steve doesn’t have any part in the life Tony built himself after Steve left him alone, and he doesn’t think he deserves to either.

 

“God knows where Tony found the kid, but they’ve been inseperable from the start. Tony sees him as a son, and I know Peter sees him as a father too.”

 

Rhodey looks Steve hard in the eyes. “He was broken after everything that happened, Cap,” he says, without malice. “We didn’t really think he would ever recover. But then came this kid, and I could barely recognise Tony. I don’t think I have ever seen him this happy.”

 

Steve looks down to the picture again, and he can see the truth in Rhodey’s words in it – in the way the kid leans into Tony touch, the way Tony has his arm thrown around Peter’s shoulders. He can see it in the excited smile Peter has, the way he seems to be looking at Tony almost reverently, and he can see it in Tony’s relaxed form. Peter is Tony’s son, and Tony is Peter’s father, and that is all there is to it.

 

“Where is he now?” Steve asks, his voice almost cracking because he _knows_ , knows before he even asks the question.

 

“We don’t know,” Rhodey says, and his voice betrays his raw grief too. “He got beamed up on the spaceship with Tony.”

 

Steve looks at Rhodey, confused. He’s seen the footage, seen it a thousand times in search for a clue, any clue that would tell him where Tony is. There wasn’t a kid with him there, only that wizard and –

 

“Oh.”

 

_**Day 34** _

 

Carol turns up on day 34, strong and powerful and ready to be the leader Steve isn’t sure he could be anymore. Afterwards, he pulls her to the side, not quite sure how to ask his question. Carol seems to know, though.

 

“If he is up there,” Carol says, her voice soft and sympathetic, “he wasn’t on the trajectory to Earth.”

 

Steve says nothing, lets his eyes close slowly, lets the disappointment wash over him once again.

 

“Hey, Cap,” Carol says, her hands a light touch on his shoulder, “we will find him. But you need to step up now, because the team need you. The team needs Captain America.”

 

Steve laughs a humourless laugh. “I am not sure I can be that for them anymore,” he confesses.

 

Carol doesn’t react, just looks at him hard. “Of course you can,” she says. “If not for them, then for him.”

 

Later, when Steve looks into the mirror at his newly clean-shaven face, he wonders if he has enough fight left in him to take on that mantle again.

 

 Steve Rogers has never been one to run away from a fight, though.

 

**_Day 567_ **

 

When Tony comes back, Steve almost doesn’t believe it.

 

It has been so long, so so long.

 

Steve traversed the length of the galaxy for Tony, wished upon every shooting star and every deity known to mankind to bring him back – and yet, when the moment came, Steve could not move.

 

After the serum, Steve did not know how to use the excess muscle he seemed to have acquired. His body had always felt too large, too foreign, as if it didn’t belong to him. In the first few days after the serum, often Steve found himself being unable to move, simply because he did not know _how._ Over time, he became more used to it, and had almost forgotten that there was a time when using his current form wasn’t a reflex.

 

Now though, standing in the open field of the Avengers Compound watching the blinking lights of what is most definitely a spaceship, being told by FRIDAY that Tony Stark has just entered the atmosphere – in that moment, Steve felt like how he did a lifetime ago.

 

It wasn’t until Tony had walked out of the ship and had locked eyes with him that Steve knew how to move. Steve had always loved Tony’s eyes – how could he not, when they looked like they contained all the secrets of the universe? Tony’s eyes were like the golden warmth of a summer day, of the feeling of belonging a man like him had desperately searched for his entire life _he missed it, he missed it so goddamn much._ It was in that moment that his limbs finally worked, because he was standing before Tony before he even realised it, pulling him into his arms and holding him close. Steve didn’t want to let go, couldn’t let go because he had lost him, he had lost everyone and he thought he had lost him too and Steve Rogers isn’t strong enough to live in a world without Tony Stark. Distantly, he knew Tony would push him away – as he should. Steve’s touch is a forbidden thought on Tony’s body; Steve doesn’t deserve it, not after the way in which he touched Tony the last time. He was sure Tony would push him away, and he didn’t know if he could handle it.

 

Tony didn’t.

 

It wasn’t until Tony leaned his head on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve felt the dampness from Tony’s eyes, that he realised he had been holding his breath.

 

When Steve exhaled, he felt as though he was finally able to breathe. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: originally I was planning on making both of them die but then I realised that in 5 hours they will actually be dead so I should give them a break while I'm at it lol 
> 
> anyways, see y'all on the other side (if I make it out of this alive)


End file.
